Docudharma Times Saturday June 14

“Dick! The Supreme

Court Says Those Evil

Doers At Guantanamo

Have The Right To

Habeas Corpus!”

“…Whatever

Hay-Bee-Ass

Korp-Iss Is.”  

Key Iraqi Leaders Deliver Setbacks to U.S.

Premier Rejects Terms of Proposed Pacts; Cleric Reactivates Militia

By Amit R. Paley and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 13 — The Bush administration’s Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces.

During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had “reached a dead end.” While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq.

USA

In Midwest, Rising Waters and Fears of Worse

By SUSAN SAULNY and MONICA DAVEY

Published: June 14, 2008

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – All around the Midwest, the water just kept rising.Even as this city was nearly shuttered on Friday, its sandbagged downtown submerged in the biggest flood ever recorded here, people in Des Moines began evacuating and other Iowa towns thought about it. In Wisconsin, stretches of major roads were closed and tornadoes struck. Some in Michigan had no power. Elsewhere, there was no train service, no drinking water, no end in sight.

Alaska’s ‘golden goose’ is a fish

By branding its wild salmon as gourmet – and banning salmon farms – this fishery is thriving sustainably.

By Yereth Rosen | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

From this picture-perfect Alaska setting of shimmering waters, snowcapped peaks, wild animals, and millions of migrating shorebirds come some of the most prized salmon in the world. The late-spring arrival of sockeye and Chinook salmon into the mouth of the Copper River is eagerly anticipated by chefs and gourmets around the nation and greeted with retail prices as high as $40 a pound.

In a world where natural salmon runs have nearly vanished and even for Alaska, where wild salmon runs are healthy and bountiful but swimming against a rising tide of cheap farmed fish, the Copper River harvest shines. It illustrates how fishermen can thrive by getting the most value out of each fish instead of chasing after huge catches. For all that, credit several strokes of good fortune and many years of savvy marketing.

Africa

In Kenya’s hotbed of postelection violence, a bishop sows seeds of peace

Cornelius Arap Korir is starting to unite the two warring ethnic communities through their common desire to grow the food that will help them to rebuild their lives.

By Scott Baldauf  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Eldoret, Kenya – They came at 10 a.m. on Jan. 3 to Jane Wanjiku’s land, just a day after the presidential election results were announced. More than 200 young men in red shorts, shouting tribal war cries, and carrying machetes and sticks, spears and torches, they forced Ms. Wanjiku out of her home before they burned it down.

But today, Wanjiku is back on her land, planting maize and beans – and, remarkably, surrounded by some of the same Kalenjin neighbors who chased her off because of her Kikuyu ethnicity. She and other Kikuyus, who supported Kikuyu candidates in December’s elections, have now been welcomed back.

South African court bans trials of vitamin treatments for Aids

· Former Mbeki adviser among scientists accused

· Government failed in duty of care, hearing told



Xan Rice and agencies

The Guardian,

Saturday June 14 2008

A South African court has banned a team of scientists and doctors, including a former adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, from conducting unauthorised clinical trials into the use of vitamin therapies to treat Aids.

German doctor Matthias Rath and American biochemist David Rasnick, who used to sit on Mbeki’s Aids advisory council, were among 12 people accused in the Cape high court of supervising illegal medical trials in black townships and selling unregistered vitamin supplements to poor Aids sufferers. The suit was brought by the South African Medical Association and the Treatment Action Campaign lobby group, which said some of Rath’s patients died after relying on his unproven remedies rather than seeking conventional treatment at state-run clinics.

Asia

Thousands swell ranks of marchers to demand that Musharraf goes

· Protest leader claims stalemate is broken

· Roads blocked but rally expected to be peaceful



Declan Walsh in Rawalpindi

The Guardian,

Saturday June 14 2008

Tens of thousands of protesters pressed towards Islamabad last night on a lawyer-led “long march” that threatened to shake Pakistan’s fragile government and further erode the authority of President Pervez Musharraf.

As the boisterous parade crawled through the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Musharraf lives, protest leader Aitzaz Ahsan predicted it would have a “profound effect” on the country’s stormy political scene.

“This is a popular movement,” he declared as cheering supporters showered his open-top bus with rose petals. “The stalemate is broken. It will be the tipping point for Musharraf.”

The lawyers’ main demand is for the restoration of about 45 judges fired by Musharraf last year including the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. But the march has become a lightning rod for much broader issues – anger with Musharraf and America.

Taleban jail raid frees hundreds

BBC

Afghan security forces are searching for hundreds of prisoners who escaped a jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after Taleban fighters blew up the main gate.

An official in the southern city told the BBC about 340 Taleban militants had got away and 15 policemen were killed in the car bomb and rocket attack.

About 1,000 people in all were thought to have escaped, Kandahar provincial council head Wali Karzai said.

A state of emergency has been declared in the city.

A Taleban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, told the Associated Press news agency that 30 fighters on motorbikes and two suicide bombers had attacked the prison, freeing about 400 Taleban members.

Middle East

Gaza prisoners in bid to lift ban on family visits

By Donald Macintyre

Saturday, 14 June 2008

Palestinian prisoners from Gaza held in Israeli jails have launched a legal battle along with their families to lift a year-long ban on visits organised by the Red Cross.

Their legal action, supported by a series of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations, is seeking to overturn a decision by the Israeli authorities to bar prison visits while Hamas remains in control of Gaza.

One of the Israeli organisations, Hamoked, says there are about 930 prisoners from Gaza held in Israeli jails and the cancellation of regular family visits “constitutes collective punishment and violates international law”.

In a response to Hamoked, the Israeli authorities said that “since Hamas’ military coup in the Gaza Strip … [it is not] possible to co-ordinate passage through the border crossings, which are now under the control of terrorist organisations.” But the rights group says that the International Committee of the Red Cross is willing to co-ordinate the visits as it always has in the past and has itself pressed for the restoration of the visits.

Al-Sadr forms elite wing to fight US forces

From The Times

June 14, 2008

James Hider in Baghdad

Moqtada al-Sadr, the virulently anti-American militia leader, announced yesterday that he was forming a new, exclusive wing of his al-Mahdi Army to fight US forces, and that most of his supporters would now concentrate on civilian works.

The cleric appeared to be trying to assert control over his sprawling, rag-tag army, accused of some of the worst death-squad atrocities in Iraq in recent years and which the Americans say has been partly coopted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “The resistance will be carried out exclusively by a special group which I will announce later,” said a statement by the Shia militia leader, who holds the junior clerical rank of hojatoleslam.

Europe

By LEO CENDROWICZ

BRUSSELS

Officials in Brussels and other European capitals appeared shell-shocked as they absorbed the news they had dreaded to hear on Friday the 13th: Irish voters had rejected the Lisbon Treaty aimed at updating the European Union’s creaking institutions.

Ireland’s population of 4.2 million amounts to less than 1% of the E.U.’s 490 million citizens, but in the mire of the defeat that offered no comfort to E.U. officials. The Union’s consensus-based decision-making system requires that all 27-member states approve the treaty, and a veto by one is enough to torpedo it. Ireland was the only member state to submit the long and confusing document to a popular referendum, and the resulting “no” vote, by a decisive margin of 54% to 46%, has created a crsisis for the E.U. as a whole.

Saturday June 14 2008  

Paris

France is braced for motorway gridlock on Monday when all major haulage unions will unite for the first time in nationwide go-slows. In what they term their “operation escargot”, French truckers are urging motorists to join them at a snail’s pace to paralyse traffic on ring roads and city centres. Hauliers want to force the government to lower fuel prices and tax, and harmonise the cost of diesel and petrol across Europe.

This comes after a week of protests that have seen truckers paralyse Toulouse’s ring road during rush hour, Bordeaux gridlocked by protesting hauliers, tractor protests in the north of France and the Spanish border route sealed.